One of the strangest—yet most promising—performance supplements seeping out of the cracks of pros is Nomio. A tiny shot that packs a punch worth 2.5kg of broccoli.
Matt: When I first heard about Nomio, my reaction was probably the same as yours: "Broccoli sprouts? For performance? Really?"
But then European pros started using it. Coaches I respect started asking about it. And David Roche—one of the sharpest minds in endurance sports—started experimenting with it.
David doesn't chase trends. He only talks about what actually moves the needle. When he gets excited about something, I pay attention.
Here's David's Take:
Last year, I started getting messages from European podcast listeners talking about a new product made of broccoli sprouts, from a brand called Nomio.
“Broccoli sprouts?” I thought. “No, thank you.”
Performance sprouts sound like something in the sketchiest aisle of Whole Foods. There’s no way it works, right? I never heard rumors about the U.S. Postal Service bike team smuggling broccoli across international borders.
But the messages kept rolling in, including from some pros who wanted our take. It reminded me so much of the buzz around Maurten sodium bicarbonate 18 months earlier. So we did our due diligence.
I talked to coaches and athletes in Europe, hearing about perceived performance benefits (and maybe strangest of all: improvements in how they felt in heavy training). I read the studies. I slid into Nomio's DMs, and they were incredibly cool people. Why couldn't they just be overconfident jerks and make my life simpler?
“Crap,” I realized. “Here we go again.”
My take: we need more data, but Nomio seems like the real deal. And I think that US-based athletes are still catching up to the new reality that the European athletes have already accepted.
Nomio Backstory
The mechanism of action is a fascinating story of scientific curiosity. As outlined by Alex Hutchinson in Outside¹, Nomio researcher Filip Larsen was intrigued by a 2021 study on overtraining, where 4 weeks of progressing training load led to “a striking reduction in intrinsic mitochondrial function that coincided with a disturbance in glucose tolerance and insulin secretion.” Larsen saw that there were impairments in the nfr2 signaling pathway. So he asked a question: what if they counteracted those impairments?
That led the researchers to isothiocyanates, or ITCs, which are rich in broccoli, kale, cabbage, and Flamin' Hot Cheetos. Previous literature demonstrated that ITCs boost nfr2. In dosing ITCs in heavy training, the goal was to reduce oxidative stress, potentially reducing the overtraining impacts.
But the researchers stumbled upon results that were shocking. The 2023 study found that ITCs also reduced lactate levels during submaximal training, in addition to protecting against some overtraining impacts, while improving performance relative to placebo. You know it's exciting science when a company starts up based on the findings, with Nomio packaging several pounds of broccoli into one shot. It's reminiscent of Fitbiomics and V-Nella, which emerged from studies on the gut microbiota of runners!
A 2025 pre-print found reductions of 0.4 mM lactate around threshold. But it was another 2025 study by independent researchers that made me experiment more. It tested muscle fibers in the presence or absence of the active ingredient in Nomio (sulforaphane). It promoted nfr2, enhanced mitochondrial respiration, and upregulated antioxidants. The money quote: “therapeutic strategies may improve the mitochondrial phenotype in skeletal muscle.”
When I fully processed the implications of those findings, all of the breath left my body.
How To Use Nomio
We have a mechanism. We have biochemical impacts. Do we have certain performance benefits or long-term data?
Not really. I think it's still early in the adoption phase of Nomio, unlike bicarb, which has permeated all of endurance sports. It's taken by plenty of cycling pros and a few track superstars. But it also tastes like someone ate a ton of broccoli and then dribbled a little bit of piss into a lemon margarita mix, so it's probably subject to the placebo effect. If anything tastes like that, it must do something.
I didn't want to believe. Then I took it. And damn if it didn't make my body seem to want to stay under both LT1 and LT2, depending on the intensity of the workout. 3 weeks ago, I did 10 x 1 mile on, 1 minute recovery with Nomio on board, and it was thrilling to feel my body settle in and clear lactate better than I expected. For full disclosure, I am prone to the placebo effect. I also took it before my DNF at Western States, so it’s not strong enough to counteract high levels of PAB (punk-ass b*tch).
It's not the high-intensity miracle that bicarb is, for me at least. For the athletes I coach, I rarely hear about that EUREKA! moment that bicarb sometimes brings. But where it really seems to shine is in helping athletes buffer the stress of hard training. There could even be broader health benefits, but the jury is out on that.
My guess is that we will see some performance studies in the next year that push Nomio up the ergogenic performance list. We’ll keep you updated. It also feels healthy when you take it, for whatever that's worth, like you're 69ing with a kind and hygienic man named Broccoli Rob.
If you want to experiment, here's how to try it:
Take it 3ish hours before your workout or quality long run, since that's how long it takes for the ITCs to activate fully. That makes it complicated for early AM training sessions. I sometimes take it 90 minutes before, or later in the day. Don’t tell anyone, or scientists will fly from Sweden and put my head in a toilet.
Aim for use in harder training blocks, or when adaptation is strained.
I like to take it 2 times per week, usually on days that I have accumulated chronic training load.
I use Maurten bicarb for my hardest workouts and races, and I don’t personally combine them on the same day because it doesn’t feel necessary. I imagine that if you take bicarb and Nomio simultaneously, it heals generational trauma.
For athletes who are more skeptical of bicarb or want to avoid the sodium load, Nomio seems like a solid replacement.
In conclusion: broccoli? Really? Yes, maybe. We’re still developing exact protocols, and it’s likely not going to make or break your trajectory, but Nomio seems to help adaptation to heavy training.
At the very least, your mitochondria will probably be happy. Broccoli Rob aims to please.
1. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/nutrition/nomio-endurance-supplement-broccoli
Image: Susan Theis
